


Winter

by paperclipbitch



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 07:44:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6648526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benvolio has never been certain if Mercutio is actually insane or merely overenthusiastic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on LJ 2008 & 2010] Three drabbles that I wrote separately, but I've combined them into one fic of vignettes here. I love these two, I will have to give them an AU happy ending one day.

There are roses growing across his mother’s balcony, and Benvolio turns away, sighing. Not today, at any rate.

“You are melancholy,” Mercutio observes later, a smirk listing across his lips. He’s _dangerous_ , Mercutio; dancing dark eyes and a seeming incomprehension of the word ‘no’. He can be a welcome relief, but a lot of the time he’s just exhausting. A liability. Benvolio insists to himself that he does not _love_ Mercutio for it.

“And there’s a word I did not think you knew,” Benvolio replies, shrugging off the arm laid deliberately across his shoulders.

Mercutio purrs softly, like a cat. “Bitter, too,” he says. “Careful, or I will not help you cheer up.”

Benvolio allows himself a glare, turning away from his friend. If ‘friend’ is the word to use to describe Mercutio, and it isn’t. ‘Responsibility’ might perhaps be closer to the mark.

“So sour,” Mercutio pushes, slinging his arm around Benvolio’s shoulders. His fingertips catch Benvolio’s cheek, soft and sudden.

“Get _off_ ,” Benvolio mutters, lips pursed in a scowl. He can’t look – won’t look – and he thinks of flowers and balconies and all that he cannot have.

“One smile,” Mercutio coaxes. “One smile and I will stop.”

Benvolio cracks and lets his lips move; he wishes it weren’t so easy.

-

It could be an admission, caught on a sigh, but there’s no sense in admitting to anything just yet.

It can pay to be prudent, Benvolio has learned. Especially when it comes to Mercutio. Especially when there has been more wine than is sensible, and the outcome of this night is becoming increasingly uncertain.

“You make things _solid_ ,” Mercutio is explaining, batting away thin air. Benvolio has never been certain if Mercutio is actually insane or merely overenthusiastic, and that conundrum has become increasingly less important over the years. Benvolio would care for him if he insisted that all the armies of Julius Caesar resided in his hair, or if he couldn't recall his own name. There is a great deal that is attractive in Mercutio’s too-bright eyes and shuddering grin. He is a fire that no one could pull away from, no matter how burnt they grew.

“That is because I am dull,” Benvolio replies, on a piece of a smile.

“No!” Mercutio seems almost offended at this suggestion, a frown passing across his features.

“You cannot always ignore the truth,” Benvolio murmurs.

“Yes I can,” Mercutio replies, pressing his shoulder against Benvolio’s. “I always can.”

There is no sense in arguing. There is never any sense in arguing, not with Mercutio.

-

Afterwards, when everyone is wearing clothes cut of the blackest cloth that can be found in Verona and tears have been shed and there is talk of commemorative statues, Benvolio is left with a pile of books and a great sense of loneliness and confusion. No one cares that his friends are dead, gone, lost to madness and lust and perhaps even love. No one cares and the lingering silences that used to be filled with Mercutio’s words are like suffocating, like a tiny death in and of themselves.

There is an embarrassment, too, that they allowed hatred to get this far, that bodies have littered the streets and tainted their society. People are already starting to try and write this event out of history, to smooth it over as though it is merely a crack in plaster that can be closed and ignored.

Benvolio spends hot summer nights alone with the ghosts and spirits of his memories. Recollections of Romeo’s laughter and habit of falling for every new woman who crossed his path until finally he gained maturity and, with it, his demise. Of Mercutio’s habit of making the world around him burn as bright as he did, of his foolish ideas and his crazed notions. Of the way he climbed up the trellis to Benvolio’s window most nights, grinning as though he knew the best joke in the world and no one else was privy to it right up until the moment their mouths touched, when he gave that grin to Benvolio along with his body and his soul and what felt like acres of exposed skin that he mapped over and over again to mark the territory as his own.

Benvolio is much too sensible to kill himself for love. He frequently wishes that he was not.


End file.
